Eighty

How to spell eighty

6 letters · 2 syllables

How to pronounce eighty

Say the part in capitals loudest.

What does eighty mean?

1. otherThe cardinal number equal to eight times ten; 80.

Eighty in a sentence

• The total bill came to eighty pounds after the discount.

• Her grandmother turned eighty at the family gathering.

Where does eighty come from?

Language of origin: Germanic

Eighty descends from the Old English eahtatig, a compound built from eahta, meaning the number eight, and the suffix -tig, which marked a group of ten and gives us the familiar -ty endings on twenty, thirty, and the rest. The eahta element traces back to the same ancient Germanic and Indo-European root that produced Latin octo and Greek okto, so distant relatives include octopus and October. The spelling trap lives in the first syllable: the sound is a plain long 'ay', yet English insists on the silent g and the 'eigh' cluster inherited from those older Germanic forms, the same one seen in eight, weigh, and neighbour. Over the centuries the pronunciation smoothed out and the 'gh' fell silent, but the written form stubbornly kept its old letters. That mismatch between how it sounds and how it looks is exactly why writers reach for 'eighty' rather than the phonetic 'aity'.

How the word is built

• eight (from Old English eahta: the number 8)
• -ty (from Old English -tig: a group of ten)